The high school seniors wore Tesla hats as they operated the various machines inside the Southeast Career Technical Academy’s advanced manufacturing lab in Las Vegas. Soon, they’ll be working full-time at the Tesla factory in Northern Nevada.

Nanotechnology could soon help clean up almost all of the dirty water in Northern Nevada, making it safe to drink, Lance Gilman, the partner broker of the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Complex, said this week on “Nevada Newsmakers.”

We recently hosted the largest and most exciting technology conference in the history of Reno-Sparks: the VentureBeat Blueprint conference, an event that looked at ways to expand high tech across the country. In attendance were more than 300 tech executives and government leaders from more than 40 states, many that had never been here before!

Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, Liberty Utilities, and Tesla are partnering for a proposed project that would bring an energy storage system to the North Tahoe region. For six years, they’ve been working on what they’re calling The Olympic Valley Microgrid Project — which would use innovative battery storage technology to store surplus energy and deliver that stored energy to the utility’s grid. It could provide backup power to Liberty Utility’s customers in the area in the event of an electrical outage.

Mark Anderson has been named director of Nevada Industry Excellence. The former general manager, human resources and general affairs, for Panasonic Energy of North America, sees this as the right time and NVIE as the right place to continue his career passion: building business and industry by focusing on employees and their personal and professional development.

New, existing and relocating technology companies are making Nevada home in both metro and rural areas, bringing innovation across the board. So far, specific technology clusters have not developed. Nevada is seeing everything from bioscience to construction and telecommunications to entertainment. “In a lot of cities you have a sector that’s doing well or a place where it’s mostly big companies or all start-ups,” said Dave Archer.

Nevada’s Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison recently returned from a 10-day TravelNevada trade mission to China. One of his biggest takeaways is the Chinese — who make up the No. 1 foreign travel market for the U.S. — see the Tesla gigafactory near Reno as a major tourist attraction.